The bishops’ pastoral letter,‘Marriage and Family – The Christian before God’, was a model of clear thinking. Spilt milk there has been in the sense that this document could have been written the moment the pro-divorce lobby formally laid out its agenda for the introduction of divorce; fairness now demands that we now lap up what they have presented as the Christian response – Christ’s clear reaction – to the problem ofmarriage and divorce.

That response is clear and unequivocal; it remains unequivocal even though attempts are made to distort its clarity. LinoSpiteri, in particular, either failed to read the letter, or to hear it being read; else how could he have concluded that, “The bishops responded loosely but carefully staying away from using the loaded three-letter word, though equating divorce with elderly men seeking a younger femalepartner?”

If truth is what we are after at this stage of the discussions,Spiteri managed its perfect travesty in a loosely put-together Talking Point that gave every impression of wishing to zap the Church from the public square, a removal the Church simply cannot accept. Calling the Church’s contribution to date a circus may give some sly pleasure to the point talker but it does not entitle him to add, not if he wishes to be taken seriously at least, that, “it also displays the determination of the bishops, reflected in their pastoral letter, that clerics take an active part on the divorcelegislation discussion”.

And like so many others who feel they should tell the Church what is not its business, Spiteri proceeded, not without some impertinence, to preach to the bishops what it is they should be addressing.

Perhaps the letter’s most telling point was the bishops’ declaration that it is the Church’s mission to place Christ and His teaching before each and every one of its members, to “place every Christian who chose to walk behind Christ before Christ Himself, as if he were listening to His words today. Christ’s words become the light of conscience in which the Christian must walk… It is before Christ that the Christian must give an account of each action of his, even in the case of marriage and divorce”.

The bishops went further: “The Christian needs to feel the responsibility of taking part in the mission to promote and protect (Christ’s) teaching.” They called on every Christian both in his vocation and in his role in society, to recognise in Christ’s words a call to promote them. Their final exhortation was to laymen, priests and members of the religious orders to take Christ’s teaching on board and to pass it on to others “with love and courage”.

For it is a truth that the effect of rampant divorce does not only threaten the stability of marriage, which is vital for the stability of the family. It changes the nature of marriage itself and, if one looks around and across the world, contributes substantially to what are being openly called “brokensocieties”. What was supposed to be a solution has become a problem. And it may be apposite to ask, time will tell, whether these societies will break down irretrievably?

Two years ago, David Cameron publicly admitted that “the number one challenge we’ve got in this country today is to strengthen our society. There is no more important way of doing that than strengthening families” (removing child benefits may not be the best way to do this!). When is this phrase, strengthening marriage, going to be fleshed out?

In the meantime and for starters, there are things to be done that are vital to prevent marriages breaking down. One of these is best carried out by preparation courses for Church and civil marriages; another is to provide pastoral care to families before cracks in the marital relationship become fissiparous; yet another, comprehensive catechesis at schools and in parishes – and in homes.

Here in Malta, we have established a Commission on Children; at least I assume that one exists once we have a Commissioner for their rights. Should we not marry it up with a Commission for Marriage and Family Law and work from an integrated base? And if strengthening marriage is to mean anything, should we not be taking a serious look, a really serious look, at what funding is provided by the government for organisations like Cana, which prepares couples for coupledom, and Proġettimpenn, which has been set up to promote marriage? And if we truly believe in preparation and counselling should that funding not be in the region of a million euros? We will see what the amount is, if there is one, tomorrow.

As the often fractured conversation on marriage and divorce goes on – often turned by some into an unwholesome in ‘yer face brawl; visit the odd blog and read for yourself if you wish to know what I mean – less and less attention is paid to children in a marriage that has run into trouble, more and more to the right of the adults’ happiness, which, as C.S. Lewis pointed out many years ago, is as much a right as that of a man demanding the right to be six feet tall).

So the phrase irretrievable breakdown has been brought in to justify that pursuit. Societies abroad have embraced the phrase enthusiastically and we have to question and require an answer as to how the common good in those societies has been helped by it.

One of those societies is the United Kingdom. I came across – well, I didn’t just come across it, I hunted it down via a system of filing that leaves much to be desired – a cutting I kept that had a reference to the parliamentary debate on the UK’s 1969 Divorce Law Reform Bill.

Then, an MP had asked, with some relevance, how much happiness had grown during the past three decades of increasing divorce. It was a question nobody could answer but the Bill’s sponsor, Leo Abse, expressed his confident belief that, “in future there would be more, not fewer, stable, legitimate happy households”. Quite.

Forty years later, the head of the UK’s Family and Parenting Institute, Katherine Rake, gave it as her opinion that boosting the idea of the traditional family was “a trap” the Labour government should avoid. Coming, risibly were the remark a matter for laughter and merriment, from the head ofsuch an institute, her opinion suggested a pathological aversion to marriage.

Rosa Monckton, a fundraiser for charities relating to children and Down’s syndrome reacted by calling Rake “wrongheaded and defeatist”, accusing her and the likes of her of “an ideologically inspired agenda to destroy the family, an institution that has been society’s bedrock…”

Irretrievable breakdown – for the sake of argument let us continute to locate the discussion in the UK – has not only developed symptoms where rakes like Rake can formally regard the traditional family as a “trap”. It propelled the language of divorce into undreamed of areas. The thin ends of wedges have a surprising way thickening to the point where they burst dams.

2011 here we go

I cannot be alone in finding the presence of an EU Big Brother peering over the shoulder of European finance ministers on the eve of a Budget speech more than a trifle intrusive. Yet this is what they agreed to when they met the other day. Having said that, I see the point; up to a point.

Once countries have behaved so irresponsibly that they needed to be bailed out by others (with our tax payments) to the tunes of billions of euros, some form of peering over finance ministers’ shoulders to see that astronomical zeroes do not find their way into the expenditure columns, came to be seen in Brussels as inevitable; and where national debts and deficits hang over the disastrous economic future of a country like the sword of Damocles by a hair, this Dionysian torment will concentrate minds sufficiently to excite those countries out of fatal situations – look at Greece, Spain, France and England.

Perhaps Big Brother tut-tutted when Tonio Fenech was tempted to raise the threshold of tax in this or that band by even, well, a hairsbreadth. And yet; and yet a few more euros in peoples’ pockets can only stimulate growth, or excite more investment and employment if, say, corporate tax were brought down a few percentage points. Having said which, direct investment, local and foreign, has been a strong performer this year.

I suspect the finance minister has determined that a three per-cent-something deficit remains his holy grail. If, however, he is projecting a figure less than 2.9 pc, there is some justification to regard each point of a percentage point below that figure as lacking in holiness and may he be visited by frogs and slippery things like that for the rest of his life; and may similar amphibians descend on Brussels and find the energy and the wherewithal to leap-frog into every Commissioner’s office in Brussels – and into the European Parliament.

Still, looking at what the British Chancellor has had to do to save Britain from economic collapse unless spending was viciously reined in, and you cannot get more vicious than to cut that spending by more than £80billion, Fenech will be forgiven if he feels a vicarious thrill run through his body and a sense of satisfaction at the way he has seen the country, so far, through the debris caused by a recession that rocked the world.

Budget 2010 coped well and better in most cases than its equivalent in most European countries. This should provide Budget 2011 with fair sail.